What I'm reading now and than
I think that I'm going to start posting what I think of books as I finish them and what I’m reading now. I think this will have some purpose.
The last book I read was the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I was looking forward to this book since I got some very high reviews from friends and I really liked Rand's first book "We the Living". In all, I found the Fountainhead terrible disappointing. It was so long and it spends so much time developing character trait only to have the characters do things that made no sense for them to do at all. Additionally, her use of exaggerated characters makes the point of the novel (which is the validity if individualism) unrealistic and I was unable to identify with anything or anybody. From a pure writing standpoint I thought it was adequate; she was creative in many ways, but also used literary tricks and shortcut to describe complex feelings and traits. If you want a further review please let me know and I'll post them as a comment. Overall, I give the Fountainhead rating of C-.
Currently, I am reading “The Fabric of the Cosmos” by Brian Greene. This is the next book in my unending quest to understand the nature of physics. My journey started almost ten years ago with a simple question, “If an object feel at an accelerated rate for a long enough time, won’t it eventually surpass the speed of light?”. From there, I found many more questions than answers. 100 pages through this book, I am tremendously impressed with the author’s ability to explain complex theories in reasonable and accurate ways. The book covers physics from many perspectives including classical, relativistic, quantum, and cutting edge superstring theory. You don’t need to be a scientist to read this, but I do not suggest it for someone without a background in physics.
The last book I read was the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I was looking forward to this book since I got some very high reviews from friends and I really liked Rand's first book "We the Living". In all, I found the Fountainhead terrible disappointing. It was so long and it spends so much time developing character trait only to have the characters do things that made no sense for them to do at all. Additionally, her use of exaggerated characters makes the point of the novel (which is the validity if individualism) unrealistic and I was unable to identify with anything or anybody. From a pure writing standpoint I thought it was adequate; she was creative in many ways, but also used literary tricks and shortcut to describe complex feelings and traits. If you want a further review please let me know and I'll post them as a comment. Overall, I give the Fountainhead rating of C-.
Currently, I am reading “The Fabric of the Cosmos” by Brian Greene. This is the next book in my unending quest to understand the nature of physics. My journey started almost ten years ago with a simple question, “If an object feel at an accelerated rate for a long enough time, won’t it eventually surpass the speed of light?”. From there, I found many more questions than answers. 100 pages through this book, I am tremendously impressed with the author’s ability to explain complex theories in reasonable and accurate ways. The book covers physics from many perspectives including classical, relativistic, quantum, and cutting edge superstring theory. You don’t need to be a scientist to read this, but I do not suggest it for someone without a background in physics.
Comments
Bill,
I appreciate your interest. The issues of gravity and acceleration are actually overwhelmingly complicated. One theory in this book that really blew my mind that if you are "free-falling" (I.e. totally giving into gravity) than, and only than are you NOT accelerating. In fact, everyone else who is not falling IS accelerating. This is one of those things that it really hard for me to understand in terms of what I see in the real world.
In response to what you wrote, if you are in a vacuum than there is no terminal velocity. Terminal velocity is a term used for a speed at which the resistance of air equals the force of acceleration and therefore you velocity becomes constant and that speed. Terminal velocity depends on both the gravitational pull and the atmosphere.
Acceleration in the Newtonian meaning is simple a measurement of distance and time (in which the relationship changes). However, as I learned in the first Einstein book, and didn't full understand for about five years, is that all movement, velocity, time, and distance are relative to the observer. And for each person, as their velocity speed up it effects their own perspective of time and distance.
Which leads to the answer to my original question. From my perspective, if I was to fall into a black hole, as I accelerate more and more (and I approached the speed of light), time (relative to me) would slow down, until the point at which my velocity reached the speed of light, at which point time would stop (thus making me unable to move further, kinda). This is the basic concept behind the idea of an event horizon. However from your perspective (watching me fall), time would stay constant and you would see me fall into the black whole.
One metaphor in this book that makes the whole relationship a little bit easier to understand is that at any moment, any object is moving through both time and through space. If you were to add both these movements together is has to equal the speed of light (which is contant no matter what). So as you move through space, your movement through time has to slow down so that you maintain balance. It took me many many years to first understand things like this and many more to actual accept that they can be true.